audio switch box « Something better to do

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Of soldering guns and audio switches

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

I want to be able to switch easily between my computer speakers and headset. Apparently, that’s easier said than done.

Some motherboards shut off audio output in back automatically when you plug something into the front. Alas, my ASUS motherboard doesn’t do that. Even if it did, that wouldn’t be “easily” — I don’t want to have to get down on the floor every time I want to use my headset, and what’s more, repeatedly plugging and unplugging the headset will wear out the jack.

One of my coworkers suggested plugging a splitter into the audio output jack, plugging both the speakers and headset into the splitter, and muting the speakers when I want to only use the headset. There’s just one problem with that — my speakers don’t have a mute or volume control.

A third possibility is to use a USB headset instead of one with a 1/8″ jack. Then, I could use the volume control applet to switch between output devices. That would work, but I do this often enough that this would be annoying.

Option four is a switch box. Like the splitter, I would plug both the speakers and headset into the box and the box into the audio output jack. The difference is that, as the name implies, the box has a switch to connect either the speakers or the headset, but not both at the same time, to the audio output.

The switch box idea seemed perfect to me, so I set about trying to find one to buy. Neither my local Radio Shack nor Micro Center were any help. Plantronics used to sell one, but apparently they discontinued it. I thought I’d hit pay-dirt when I found this site, but when I tried to order a switch box from them, I was informed that they were on vacation and not accepting orders between December 23 and January 4. That was the last straw!

For almost two decades, I have been privately ashamed of the fact that I, an MIT EECS graduate, had not once in my life wielded a soldering iron for fun or profit. I didn’t even own one! “Self?” I said to myself. “Self? This is your chance to erase that blot from your character. An audio switch box is not rocket science. Build it yourself, you EE wimp!”

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